Dec 01 2012

All Asian People Look The Same pt 2

Last week I posted a blog post of these three girls and asked our viewers to guess where each girl was from.  Here are the answers.  
This is Ayumi, she is from Japan.  

This is Jane, she is from Korea.  

This is Hetty, she is from China.

Maybe I should do portraits of Scandinavians next?  :) Did you guess right?  Let us know in the comments.  
Nov 20 2012

All Asian People Look The Same

I’ve heard it said that “all asian people look the same.”  Here is a blog post that is going to put that theory to the test.  These three girls, are from different countries in Asia.  I want you to guess WHERE each girl is from, and let us know in the comments.  

Girl 1
Girl 2

Girl 3


Let us know in the comments which girl you think is from what country, i.e “I think girl 1 is from… girl 2 is from… girl 3 is from…”  I will post a blog next week telling you, who is from where.  
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Santiago Vera - girl 1 – japan.  girl 2- Korea . girl 3- phillipines….. but really clueless. i’m still trying to tell white people apart…..this is harder  :-p

DAD - Not sure about 1 and 3, but 2 is Korean I think.  They are all beautiful though.

Nov 13 2012

3 Steps To Better Inanimate Object Photos

One of our blog readers The Moldy Cannoli asked us how to take beter photos of inanimate objects for blog posts.  If you look on her blog, her photos look good already.  But here are some tips for others that might be useful.  

The other day Jess found a snail shell outside, so I’m going to use that as my example.  I took the two photos below with my iphone 3gs which is not a good camera at all.  I purposely choose to use this “camera” to show that you can achieve decent results with any camera.  


The first example is the snail shell on a dining room table.  It’s a snapshot, the object is placed in the center of the frame and you can sort of tell what it is.  But lets talk about what makes this photo  a not so good photo.  

1.  The first thing is that your eye is always going to be drawn to the BRIGHTEST part of the photo.  That happens to be the glare from the sun on the table.  So automatically my eye is drawn away from the subject.  

2.  The piece of junk mail on the table in the upper left hand corner is also distracting.  

3.  Lastly, you can’t see much detail in the shell and the lighting is rather flat.  


For the “better” photo I took the shell over near a window.  The shell is actually on an afhgan hanging over the back of the couch.  The shell is probably about a foot away from the window which is to the left.  Window lighting is ALWAYS flattering, it’s soft lighting because its indirect.   It won’t be soft lighting if the sun is beating directly into that window though, so pick a window on the side of your house that the light is indirect.  The side lighting gives the shell more “shape” because of the light and shadows.  (Not flat like our last photo)  

For this photo I moved in closer which does TWO things.  It allows you to see more detail, AND it eliminates a distracting background.  I should have cropped this photo at the top and bottom so you were really focusing on the shell.  The folds in the afghan at the top are distracting.

I also positioned the shell in a way that was more flattering.  I remember someone who was hired to photograph some jewelry and instead of laying the pieces flat on a table he found a small peice of drift wood and hung the earrings so that they would display more in their natural state.  Sometimes simple adjustments to presentation will make or break your photo.  

So three steps to improve your photos of inanimate objects are…

1.  flattering lighting
2.  positioning the object in a flattering way
3.  non-distracting background

Did you find these tips helpful?  What other advice would you give?  Let us know in the comments!

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themoldycannoli - Thank you for writing this post, I didn’t know that the eye is always drawn to the brightest spot on a picture, but that makes sense. I always try to take photos in natural lighting, it just stinks when my window-of-natural-light-opportunity is so short and I am trying to wrangle a baby. :)

theBAKERSphotography - great glad it helped!  

Nov 06 2012

Protect Your Camera From DUST

Honolulu Color Run 
Saturday Jess ran in the Honolulu Color Run.  I took our Canon S100 point and shoot to document.  I didn’t think it through very well… 

8 TONS of color.  That means 8 tons of colored cornstarch filling the air.  

The photo above was one of the last photos I took before my camera just stopped working.  

Now it won’t start back up saying it has a lens error.  I’m sending it to Canon tomorrow.  I don’t think its going to get repaired for free when they take it apart and a lot of colored dust comes out… 

Moral of the story.  Protect your camera from dust.  I should have put mine in our underwater housing.  

Have you ever had to have a camera repaired?  Share your story in the comments.  
Oct 30 2012

Shut the BEEP UP!

Emily from my school of photography. 
Want to know a simple way to improve your photography?  

Mute the volume on your camera so that when you turn it on, it does not make that annoying start up sound and won’t beep every time your camera focuses.   

Silencing the beep will help you get better photos.  To get better candid shots you want to try and blend in.  Camera sounds don’t help that cause.  When people hear that beep they know someone is taking a picture, so they are going to awkwardly scan the room to see who is taking their photo and there goes your “natural” moment.  
I was in a meeting recently and besides the person speaking, the only other noise was someones camera making digital shutter sounds.  Please don’t be that person.  :)  

Have photographers ever been a distraction to you?  Do you need to go turn your camera beep off?  Let us know in the comments.